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The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons

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The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons Tatiana Flessas LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers 10/2007 London School of Economics and Political Science Law Department This paper can be downloaded without charge from LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers at: www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/wps/wps.htm and the Social Science Research Network electronic library at: http://ssrn.comabstract=1021205. © Tatiana Flessas. Users may download and/or print one copy to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. Users may not engage in further distribution of this material or use it for any profit-making activities or any other form of commercial gain. Tatiana Flessas The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons Tatiana Flessas∗ Abstract: What can the concept of ‘the commons’ lend to cultural property and heritage analysis? How can it be applied to these areas, if one looks beyond the protection of solely ‘natural’ resources such as land (although ‘land’, as a highly regulated substrate bearing a plethora of significations and values may itself no longer be considered a ‘natural’ resource)? The debates around property and culture are more usually understood by reference to ‘cultural nationalism,’ ‘cultural internationalism’ and the web of disciplines and resources that grow between these two traditional approaches, and yet, these resources leave many problems and issues in this field unresolved. The discourses that make up commons scholarship might serve to expand the tool box of cultural property discourse, in particular where the issues span the most personal and the most communal problems of all: human skeletons and repatriation claims. This essay argues that the very discourse of the commons itself is a strategy, a means of establishing and policing thresholds that in turn move according to strategies and desires of acquisition. In short, designating an object as located within ‘the commons’ is another way of justifying the appropriation of contested cultural property. INTRODUCTION In July 2000, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in London. On the agenda was the repatriation of Australian indigenous skeletons and associated objects currently held in UK institutions, and in particular, by the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, and other museums in the United Kingdom. When indigenous Australian groups requested the return of specific skeletons, ‘the museums refused the requests on the grounds that return is prevented by legislation’.1 The Trustees of the British Museum had claimed that the terms on which they hold the collection in trust forbade them to accede positively to the demands of indigenous peoples.2 In July 2000, the precise ∗ Law Dept., London School of Economics ([email protected]) 1 Human Remains Report (2003), §56, available at http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library /Publications/archive_2003/wgur_report2003.htm. 2 The British Museum Act 1963 permits the Trustees to dispose of items in the collection under section 5 and section 9 of the Act. Neither section specifically allowed the repatriation of human remains. 1 10/2007 number and location of the indigenous Australian skeletons held by UK institutions was unknown. However, the requests to museums had begun to raise questions about the necessity, and possible structure, of a repatriation programme in the United Kingdom. After this meeting, the two Prime Ministers issued a statement declaring that ‘The Australian and British Governments agree to increase their efforts to repatriate human remains to Australian indigenous communities. In doing this, the Governments recognise the special connection that indigenous people have with ancestral remains, particularly where there are living descendants’.3 The statement committed both governments to a long-term cooperative effort, in consultation with indigenous organisations, to identify and repatriate indigenous human remains held in the UK. This action brought the nascent repatriation debate in the United Kingdom into focus for museums and the other institutions that might be affected by changes in policy. The questions of how to conceptualize or categorize human bones, and how to consider, or justify, their appropriation (either by educational and scientific institutions or by cultural or genealogical claimants), raised issues of contested histories, colonialism, and the likelihood of being able to establish ongoing cultural connections across centuries and continents. Most importantly, the debate turned on the role and function of these bones within museums, and the potential clashes between the ‘enlightenment’ values espoused by most museums, which prioritize scientific and scholarly study and public access (with some limitations), and the values that turn on identity, personhood and community, and which might remove the bones from even limited appearances within the public domain. This ‘clash’ of values is inherent in any discussion that concerns itself with the ownership or allocation of human bones. Human bones evade ownership in any traditional sense: one the one hand, the question of property rights in the human body lacks a clear answer.4 On the other hand, the question is over-determined in legal theory: there are a plethora of conceptual and legal regimes that seek to analyze and regulate the function and meaning of ‘ownership’ in this area. The debate is especially problematic because of the fluid set of identities or identifications that human bones or skeletons can take in different institutions and during different political or historical eras. The plasticity of both the physical and the cultural resources to be administered lies at the core of cultural property disputes, and functions to destabilize many of the certainties otherwise guaranteed by law. For example, a skeleton may be an artefact, an ancestor, an object of scientific study, a political icon, or a religious relic. The skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State in 1996, and later named 3 n 1 above, 2. 4 Human Tissue Act 2004 Section 32, ‘Prohibition of commercial dealings in human material for transplantation’, but see §32(9) which excludes ‘gametes and embryos…, and material which has become property by application of human skill’; and §54(7), which excludes cell lines. This instantiates the Lockean standard in the new Act. For debates on what this may mean, see Moore v Regents of UCLA 793 P.2d 479 (Cal. 1990). 2 Tatiana Flessas The Repatriation Debate and the Discourse of the Commons ‘Kennewick Man’ by the press, has filled many of these roles in the United States. Human skeletons – or any objects of cultural importance – are mutable in value, and thus in identity within regimes of regulation that turn on value. These issues were considered in depth by the Working Group on Human Remains in Museum Collections (WGHR), which was established by the Minister for the Arts, under the chairmanship of Professor Norman Palmer in May 2001. The WGHR highlighted not only the methods of acquisition of human remains, but also the underlying rationales for acquisition. The contrast they noted between human remains as cultural ‘goods’, logically residing in collections spurred and supported by a combination of scientific interest, curiosity, and interest in foreign cultural practices, and human remains as ‘ancestors’, and thus not appropriate subjects for collection and display, summarizes the ongoing debate regarding responsible behaviour vis-à-vis these remains.5 After two years of work and extensive consultations undertaken by the WGHR and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS),6 the Government incorporated the recommendations of the WGHR, in their mildest possible form, in Section 47 of the Human Tissue Act 2004. The WGHR concluded that ‘Without discounting the possibility of other methods of sanctioning return, we believe that express relaxation of the British Museum Act 1963 would enable the relevant museums to return remains at their discretion without any concern that such return is contrary to law’.7 Under section 47(2), the British Museum, as well as other institutions in England,8 will have the right to repatriate or ‘de-accession’ any human remains in their collections that are less than 1000 years old.9 The right to de-accession in subsection (2) is extended to human remains mixed or bound with non-human materials in section 47(3), for 5 Human Remains Report (2003), Chapter 3 ‘Origins and Destinations’, et seq. This debate has not only informed the responses to the Consultation questionnaires that HRWG sent to many interested parties, but it has also served as the formulation of the issues as addressed in public on the issue of de- accessioning. In the professional scientific and curatorial arenas, and in the public arena as well, there seems to be a cautious preference in favour of retention rather than de-accessioning. See ‘UK to Restitute Human Remains? Human Remains: Objects to study or ancestors to bury? Panel debate organized by the Institute of Ideas and the Royal College of Physicians’ Anthropology Today 19(3) (2003) p. 28. 6 DCMS had already published the Seventh Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade (July 2000), and it engaged in further consultation until and throughout 2004. 7 n 1 above, §58. In brief, the WGHR recommended that the government empower
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